The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, Part 4

I woke to find that I had been awake for a while. For I was standing next to a lake. Huxley was at my side asking me to jump in. The rippling skin of the lake shimmered and just beneath the surface I thought I saw movement. I dipped my toe in to test the temperature and found it very agreeable. I felt one with the liquid, like my own body was agreeing with it. As I stepped in I found that I couldn’t descend gradually. It was a cliff, and the lake swallowed me at once. I also found that I couldn’t float, that I was plummeting, down, down, further and further, and I began to feel the water get colder, and the pressure in my head get stronger. As I panicked, I opened my eyes and saw Huxley waving his arms about as if he was giving me directions. The moment I put out my arms my plummeting stopped abruptly. I felt my lungs begin to burn since I was running out of breath. I gulped in a mouthful of cool, delicious water, choked, and felt the beginnings of suffocation. Then something strange happened. I found that I could breath with ease. Bubbles leaked out of my mouth as if I was a scuba diver. I felt a sudden flash of relief. It was delightful. I also found that maneuvering was very simple. You just point in the direction you want to go and then paddle. I could move at great speed, as fast as a dolphin. Huxley joined me at my side and began to explore the underwater exotica. After about an hour we reemerged and dried off on the bank. In swimming in the lake, I told Huxley how it seemed almost alive, like it had its own personality. Ah! Personality.

Huxley: “Ah! But this is one of the things that must die. Isn’t it strange that words with a Latin origin sound better, more intellectual, than a word with an Anglo-saxon origin? Maternal seems more sophisticated than motherly, intoxicated more than drunk. This may explain why we attach so much important to ‘personality’, of Latin origin. People think it is reverential, the highest form of reality that we come into contact with. But look at the Anglo-saxon equivalent: selfness. The overtones of reverence are gone! The high-class is gone. It is now like the discord from a cracked bell! We finally see that ‘personality’ is just what we need to get rid of.”

We walked away from the crashing of the waterfall and into a clearing. We sat down on a carpet of brush.

Huxley: “It is the Self, the final obstacle to knowledge of God, the kind of knowledge that merges us with God. The original sin is to be a Self; the death of the Self is the original virtue! But we lose personality; that’s sounds much worse. But it only ‘sounds’ words because of the Latinity of ‘personality’. It sounds solemn if put that way. We remember that the Trinity is a community of ‘persons’. But these Persons are not the same as the persons we meet everyday. There is only one thing had in common: the indwelling Spirit in all of us. The Self eclipses this Spirit like the moon eclipses the sun. Unfortunately, the word ‘person’ simultaneously names the Persons of the Trinity and our Self, and so we think that to get rid of ‘personality’ somehow denigrates the Persons. Perhaps our Self willed this subconsciously! Our Self loves itself. Our Self wants a reason for its love. What better reason than to christen the Self with the same title that names the Trinity!”

He pulled out a book that liked looked like a white cotton candy. The cover was a dark cloud and the pages looked like cirrus clouds. And from the cirrus cloud came a voice lie pouring rain and it startled me. I listened.

The Cloud of Unknowing: “How do we destroy the naked knowing and feeling in our being? If the naked knowing was destroyed, do all hinderances disappear? Yes. But we need God’s special grace to make this happen. You then need to be able to receive the grace, the grace of destroying the naked knowing and feeling. If you don’t receive the grace, the naked knowing and feeling will fester. But what is this ability? What is its nature? It is a strong and deep ghostly sorrow! Sure, all men have sorrow. But those men that know and feel they have sorrow have it more deeply. Any other type of sorrow is a game. This sorrow is perfect. It cleanses the soul of sin and the pain deserved from the sin. It allows the soul to receive joy! ---- This sorrow is full of holy desire. How does the soul bear this sorrow? It is only because sometimes it is fed by working rightly. If the soul knows and feels God, he inevitably also knows and feels that it is a foul stinking lump of Self that knows and feels. This Self must be despised, hated, and forsaken! Only after this can you be a perfect disciple on the mount of perfection. If you go mad for this, you go mad for sorrow. ---- Every soul must feel this sorrow and desire. God must be willing and we must be able. This is the treasure God has vouchsafed for us.”

Huxley: “What is this stinking lump, this Self that has to die before we can truly know God in purity of spirit? Hume said we are a bundle of complexes and perceptions, one coming after the other very rapidly and in constant flux. The Buddhists say almost the same thing: there is no soul underneath the flux of perceptions or the bundles of complexes. But how did the bundles become bundles? Did they come together of their own free will? If so, why, how, and where? There is no good answer to these questions. So, there must be a soul underneath the bundles and the complexes. The soul organizes everything. This organization just happens to be a particular personality. This is Hinduism and Western thought from Aristotle to today. But man isn’t just a mind and a body; he is a mind, body, and a spirit: a trinity. Personality is a product of mind and body. The spirit is akin to the Ground of all being. Our final end is to love, know, and merge with the Godhead. The Godhead is our not-self that our Self merges with only if the Self chooses to die. Once the Self dies, the spirit lives!”

Three sages came by and said:

William Law: “How could we deny the Self if there wasn’t something else in us that wasn’t a Self?”

Berulle: “We are a nothing, a void, surrounded by God, a hollow God fills if He desires.”

Eckhart: “There’s an inward and an outward man. The outward man depends on the soul, which blends with the flesh. This is the servant, the outward man, the old man. The inner man, the new man, the friend, is the spirit. There is a seed of God in us. Good farming will make it sprout. Its fruits will be God-fruits, as pear seeds sprout pear-fruits.”

Huxley: “It is important that the will is free, free to choose the Self or the Godhead, damnation or salvation. Our craving will never be satisfied if the Self is chosen, but choosing the Self manifests itself in as many ways as there are vices or objects of affection. The more vices and objects of affection the Self latches onto the more unique and idiosyncratic the personality. However, in a crisis the personality is completely submerged and we are raised to a higher level, we are different. In disaster, ordinary people become heros, martyrs: in fact, selfless. It seems easier to be selfless in a crisis than in ordinary experience. In ordinary experience, nothing shocks us out of Selfness. We have only our will and knowledge of God. Without crisis, we wallow in our personality. Nevertheless, the saint transforms every single moment into a moment of crisis! At each moment we choose between life and death, damnation and salvation, darkness and light, Self and God, time and eternity, our will or His. This is not easy and that is why the saint trains himself daily, like the soldier or the athlete. They train to arrive at the state where they are aware of the divine Ground of themselves and everyone else, and to meet every circumstance selflessly, with love. This training is very difficult; that is why there are many soldiers, but few saints! They meet a crisis moment by moment. Through this training, the saint transcends personality in all circumstances. They love their neighbor, including their enemies.”

Everywhere was shade. It looked like a storm was coming. The wind picked up in waves and I began to feel a mist in intervals. We sought shelter under the canopy of the trees. The sky opened and the deluge broke free. The thunder was its escort. The land was given its weekly shower. The air became thick with all kinds of scents mixed with the moisture. Everything had a coating of dew. Even the mud seemed clean, as if one could use it like a bar of soap and the rain itself like shampoo. But it was refreshing and the temperature was pleasant. We waited out the squall. Today we had discussed personality; later we would discuss sanctity and the divine incarnation. I laid on my stomach at the outer boundary of our tent to just watch and relax.